Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

IMO streamlining military ops would be a good first step instead of letting it run like a giant wasteful behemoth.

Agree the US would crumble without it, but so would most of the rest of the world eventually. Even an uneasy peace and order via this behemoth that more or less allows day to day operations to go on is much more tenable than the chaos and continual war our ancestors faced for most of human history. That and let's also face it, this complex also props USD as the world current reserve currency. If people think things are bad now in the US, wait until there is no reserve currency status of our dollar.
I could also make several arguments against my paragraph above, but that's not my point here.

As for uber rich, I found it amazingly ironic that so many people (even those there who aren't actually uber rich) flew to a recent climate change event in private jets... which are used normally by said people... and pollutre more per flight than most of us plebs here will in 10 years.

As for wishing imminent death... uhhhhhh... don't know if I want to cross that line with internet jokings... even if this is the politically incorrect blog in a not normal forum with annual GS awards.

 

re: Marv's point about China -

The lot of us are basically in a toxic 3-way codependent relationship. Plot isn't any better than the Twilight trilogy. 0/5 not recommended.

re: wishing for an imminent death -

I actually wasn't joking. Doesn't seem so bad when I look ahead at 40 years of unaffordable student loan payments, never owning a home or starting a family (which, to me, just means owning multiple pets), never retiring, and working 60 hours a week just to scrape by, simply grinding into a future with the effects of climate change waiting. There's a reason young people have a thing for dark comedy. Honestly seems like a considerable choice in the face of lifelong wage slavery and inevitable death via starvation or preventable illness.

Time to stop bitching. Coffee has me chatty this morning...

 

Everyone cheer for the Corona virus and hope for the best(for the planet).
There you go buddy.

 

Not if we stop buying their shit.

 

Just stop recycling and bury the paper and plastics deep in landfills. Putting all the carbon we unsequestered back underground is the only way out of this.

 

Yeah I worked in a book bindery when I was 16. It sucked ass standing in the same spot on concrete doing the same monotonous shit for 10 hours a day. Working in construction after that felt like heaven.

 

I worked a summer job in a flowerbulbs processing place. Boring and dirty work lots of dust that got into your nose and lungs, finally on sunday when you got all the shit out of your nose and lungs it started all again on monday. Pretty unsafe workplace in general, i remember standing on the two legs of a forklift fully extended fixing a light on the ceiling. I guess i should have thought better but i was young and stupid.

 

And how many of those 1.6B can afford a smartphone? The Chinese are nowhere near US/EU consumer markets.

 

There are over 850 million smartphone users in China alone, and that's only going to increase, along with the rate at which they are replaced.

 

They're still nowhere near the levels of consumerism that US+EU are at, and won't be anytime soon. The average yearly income in China is ~3000USD.

 

We are just fucked differently. After sitting behind the boomers because they never get out of the way (whether in politics or in the jobplace) we'll be paying for the boomer's retirement and medicare. Then the ponzi scheme will collapse when it comes our time to get a piece.

As for climate change... I agree, I don't see a good out. Between China and the Ocean (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OceanCarbon), the rest of the developed world won't be able to do much to move the needle.

 

It's actually around 12.5k per year, and a cheap smartphone causes just as much waste, if not more, than a more expensive one.

 

You underestimate how much people want technology, not to mention how cheap smartphones can be. There are a few I can get delivered for $78, and yes I do notice people who buy these phones cycle reasonably often as well (in part due to how crap loads of these phones are).

Also:
"In 2018, the annual per capita disposable income of rural households in China was approximately 14,617 yuan, around one third of the income of urban households."

This is 2018 stats but I'm too lazy to check for more current figures. Converted that's USD 2k or so for households in rural areas per https://www.statista.com/statistics...ncome-of-rural-and-urban-households-in-china/.

As for the rest of this thread, I'm happily sitting on the fence and reading for now. Stressful, but educational.

 

Phones on a chip made bank for Lenovo and Huawei.

China is fucked for demographic reasons. They’re going to hit stagflation at a much lower standard of living than the other Asian Tigers. The one child policy pretty much dooms their economy to start contracting at a certain date. The CCP did well in getting rid of the iron rice bowl and trying to increase Chinese domestic consumer spending so they won’t have to go full socialist state funded by digging commodities out of the ground and selling it until they hit rock bottom due to price fluctuations like the USSR. They still do that but it’s not the backbone of their economy.

Another problem is the free growth provided from outsourcing manufacturing jobs is drying up as the Chinese standard of living increases. Skilled labor is infinitely more expensive in many parts of China compared to unskilled labor now. Many jobs are leaving China for SE Asia and the domestic Chinese alternatives can’t fulfill demand because there is no domestic market for the domestic alternatives.

The most optimistic thing to say it is pretty much impossible for them to f**k up as much as imperial China did from 1700-1900. Xi is not Ceausescu and China doesn’t look entirely like 1984 the movie with John Hurt yet.

 

All of this only shows the average Chinese income is nowhere near where it can afford the lifestyle and consumerism of US/EU.

There's no doubt Chinese manufacturing has a huge impact on climate change, but if you remove the 500+ billion dollars imported to the US and 1.5 trillion elsewhere (not counting HK), that'll put a serious dent in it.

 

The climate change discussion can be interesting and informative until shit like that comes up:

Do you even understand what it means? literally or by analogy to the Holocaust?

 

I understand what it means. It means people who think that temperatures year round being gradually higher since then industrial revolution, glacier melting, etc. think it is not caused by men and is a natural cycle the planet is undergoing. That against the vast majority of the scientific community and experts in the matter. Like somehow scientists internationally are all involved in some conspiracy to hide the real truth from the world.

It's the same reasoning flat earthers have.